Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: Hi, I'm Sharen amarani
designer and educator. I'm here to help you kick
start your wedding planning. I will share my knowledge as a designer and as
someone who just got married to teach
you to design and create your own wedding
invitation and infographics. I've been a designer for over ten years and a
teacher since 2022. I currently send
my illustration at the art and craft market here
in Helsinki where I live. You can also find
my surface design on online platforms
like Spool flower, Creative Market,
and on Mets shop. Last summer, I designed the
infographics for our wedding. So I know first
time what it means to organize a wedding
and what you need. I also know that wedding
can be pretty expensive is a way to save money and
also put your personal touch. We will be using a W
Illustrator program, and by the end of this class, you will be able to
create a file with multiple arbods with multiple
sizes, work with text, Victorize means
digitize your art, design the layout for
your infographics, export your artboards into printable files or files
that you can share online. And very important, you
will have a better idea of the information you need to share with your guests
for your wedding. By learning to make your
own wedding infographics, you will be learning a
way to leverage your art. Last, after this class,
you will able to, for example, design the birthday party invitations
for your children. You will be able to make
personalized greeting cards. And who knows? Maybe your best friend
will ask you to design her wedding invitation, a wedding info graphics.
Wouldn't that be great. This class is for beginners
to intermediate students. Someone who's learning
a Illustrator as a hobby or someone who
use Illustrator for word, but he's just starting
to know this program. So you need to know the basics. I will, however, explain
every step along the way. As a student, you
will need a computer. Internet connection,
the latest version of Ado Illustrator. Some drawings you made or pictures you took a
scanner and a camera, and the camera of your
phone is totally fine. Together, we will register all information that
we need to include in our infographics because we think important to share
them with our guests. I will show you where
to find inspiration. Then we will vectorize our paintings or
drawings or pictures. And then we will design the layout for the
final lithographics. For this class, I suggest you create your own project
because at the end, you will be able to share a
draft of your final project, so a draft of your graphics. But if you want, you can also design you can also share in the project gallery
your final version of the wet graphics. And I will show you
step by step how to explore them and upload
them in the project gallery. So if you think this
is the class for you, keep watching.
Let's dive into it.
2. Class Project: After watching all the lessons, you can upload
your class project and receive a feedback from me. For this class,
your project can be just a draft or the final version of your
wedding infographics. I will show you step by
step how to create a file, how to export it,
and how to upload the final design to
the project gallery.
3. Brainstorm List: Hi, welcome to this lesson. The first thing
we're going to do is open Adobe Illustrator
and create a new file. If you don't have the
application on your task bar, you can search here
Adobe Illustrator, click on the icon, and wait
for the program to open. This might take a few moments. Once the program opens, you can click on the
new file button. Give a name to our new file. Let's call it wedding
infographics. For the size, I like to work with a size
I'm familiar with. So this time, I will
choose an A for size and I will be working with
two artboards for now. Later on, I can always change the size of the
artboards or add some. About the color mode, I suggest you work with CMYK
because it's going to be good either if you
decide to print your infographics or
have them digital. Unless you are 100% sure you will have
everything digital, then you can use RGB color. But I guess you will end
up printing something. So in order to have
cohesive colors, among the infographics, I
suggest that you use CMYK. About the Rusa effect, 300 PPI, that's perfect. Now we are ready to create a new file so you can press
on the Create button. I will start writing the list of information
outside artboard. I will use the text tool. You can select T
on your keyboard, press T on your keyboard or find the tool on
the left toolbar. I will speed up this
process and at the end, you can pause the video and
read the list that I made. This is my brainstorm
moment where I wrote down all the information that I thought my guests
were going to need. I suggest to you will follow a chronological order because
this helps you to think about what is going
to happen and which kind of informations
your guests might need. I decided then also
to decorate a bit my list just to make
it more appealing. I ended up also adding a
few information eventually. Now, to save our file, we can go to File, Save. Select the folder where you
want to save your file. I created a folder with all my Adobe files,
give it a name. The program in this case remembers already the
name we gave it before, and then you can click on Save. Now that we have a better idea what we want to include
in our infographics, it is time to think about how we are going to design them. In the next lesson, we are going to concentrate
on the aesthetics, look for visual
inspirations and colors.
4. Find Inspiration: It is time now to research for inspirations and
reference pictures. I remember I started my
own Pinters board and Instagram collection
on this topic years before knowing I was
going to get married. So you may have collected
a lot of ideas already. My favorite places for this purpose are
Pinterest and Instagram. I suggest you start collecting your reference
inspiration pictures, fabric samples,
calligraphy, fonts, anything you like to integrate
in your special day. A color palette can
absolutely be helpful too. After collecting them, select
the ones you like the most. I downloaded them and saved the most important reference
in a folder on my computer, where I organized all my
files for the wedding. They will help you to create
an overall coherence style. At the same time, I found that the fewer pictures I
was able to choose, select the easier
it was to design the infographics
because too many ideas can be overwhelming eventually. Note that if you're planning to sell the design
that we are going to make, your inspiration pictures and your paintings should
be your original ones. Or be sure to have the
rights to use them. Well done, you just created a moodboard full of
ideas and references. Now it's time to get creative.
5. Get Creative: For the next step, you
can start painting, drawing and creating
the illustration, one or more that we are later going to bring
into the computer. If you have old paintings you want to use,
that is great, too. If you like to take pictures, you can also do that and collect a few photos
to use later. Feel free to collect
anything that inspires you and that you want to
use in your infographics. Dried leaves and flowers, for example, they're
really easy to scan. Here is what I'm going to
use for our demonstration. In this lesson, I showed
you some examples of what you can create,
draw, or paint. Once you have accomplished that, you will be ready
for the next lesson. I will teach you how to scan
or photograph your art.
6. Photograph or Scan Your Art: After you create your art and collected other
inspirations like painting, photos, dry leaves or flowers, it is time to scan
or photograph them. If you do not have a scanner, the best way to photograph
your painting is to position it them
on a flat surface with natural soft light. This to avoid a strong shadow. The same is true for
dried flowers or leaves. White background is best, as you can see in this video. In the case of a
light colored flower, then you will choose a
contrasting background. As you can see, I'm
doing it with my phone, that's enough because then we are going to vectorize them. So the quality of the picture
is not that important.
7. Adobe Illustrator: Create a File, Place Images and Provisory Palette: Next we're going to
create a new file. You can click on New file
on the top left corner. This is the file where we will bring our illustrations,
our pictures. So I'm going to call it
Vctorizedillustrations. Now we are ready to click
on the Create button. We can see that there is
the A four size artboard. The next step, we're going
to import our illustrations, pictures scans that we are
next going to vectorize. You go to File Place
and navigate to the folder where you saved all your illustrations,
photograph and scans. Next, select all the
pictures you want to import and click on Place. Now I will place them one
by one in my working area. Now that we imported all the pictures that
we are going to use. I want to create a
provisory color palette so that when we are ready
to start vectorizing, we have some color to use. We can later modify
this color palette. I start by creating a shape that I will
fill with the colors. I make sure that there is
nostro color but a fill color. Now I want to give a fill
color to this shape, and to be able to pick a
color from the pictures, I need the color picker tool. I press I on my keyboard. You can also file this
tool on the left. Once you have selected tool, you can click on the area
with the color that you like. If I want to make a
copy of this shape, I select it with my arrow tool, I click and drag pressing out on the
keyboard to make a copy. If I want to repeat
this last action and make more copies
of this circle, I can press Control D or
Command D on the keyboard. After I made several copies, I can continue giving
them different colors. I select the second circle. I go back to my
color picker tool, letter I on my keyboard
and I give him a new color and I repeat the same action for as many colors as I want. At this point, we have already started working on our file, and a good practice
is to save as often as possible to not lose any of the
work that we did. Since this is the
first time we save, you can press Control as on your keyboard
or go to FileSave, select the folder when you
want to save your file. Give it a name. We already named it when we created a file, but here you have a
chance to change again the name and then
you can save it. Next time you save, you will not have to
do this part again. I will just automatically
save in the same file.
8. Adobe Illustrator: Digitize PART 1: All right. Now we are ready
to start victorizing. For this process, I usually use my mouse and my welcom
drawing tablet. If you don't have a drawing
tablet, don't worry. You can design
beautiful illustrations also using your mouse, and you will discover there are different kind of
tools you can use and you will be able
to choose the one that's best for you that's
easier for you to use. Let's start with this fern. I took a fern. I painted with
black acrylic color and then I pressed
it on a white paper. And then I scan the white
paper. This is the result. In this case, we have very
good contrast of colors, and we are going to use
the image trace tool. Is a scan picture
made of pixels. If you zoom, you can see this. I'm going to make a copy
of this pixel image. I'll make sure I select it, and then I'm going to choose
the image trace tool. In my case, I had it
on the right toolbar, but you can also go to Window and open the tool from there. So the image trace
window will open. I suggest you play
with all the settings. What I usually like
to do when I have this kind of black and
white image is to use the setting for logo and then modify it opening
the advanced options. Once the program
completes the process, you can zoom in and see that image is now
made of vectors. In this case, there are
still more than one color, so I'm going to modify this. I would like to use just
black and white. All right. I'm going to work more on the settings using
advanced settings. Image trace is an effect that we are applying
on a PC image. Once you are happy with the
result of your settings, remember that you always
have to expand the image, you have to go to object expand, and then approve the settings. You always have to do this
after using image trace. At this point, you will see that your image has
been vectorized. The process has been completed. This time when we
vectorize our then, we vectorize also the
white background. What I want to do now
is to remove the white. I will select all my vectorized illustration
and ungroup it. You can do right click group
or go to object group. Then select the white
is what we want to eliminate and press delay. At this point, we only
have the black shapes, and now to be able to
work easily with it, I select again all the black
illustration and group it. Now you can zoom me and with the direct selection
tool, the wet arrow, you can see how the
shapes are made and the advantage
of vectors that you can tweak and modify
the shapes by moving the anchor point in the way that you prefer
and that you need. Now that I'm happy with
the shape of my fur, I will move it on my hardboard
where I will collect all my vectorized
illustration and I color it with a more
delicate color. Next, I'm going to vectorize one of my watercolor illustrations. I'm going to choose this one. We're going to use again
the image trace tool, choose your setting and
remember that if you can select now the
ignore white option. This time we're going to keep more colors because
I want to try and have the effect
of the watercolor. As you can see once the
vectorizing process ended, effect is not as beautiful
as the original water color. That's why usually if I want to use a
watercolor illustration, I will not vectorize it, but I would rather work with it on another program
like Photoshop. But I want still to show you an option or
something you can do. With this image trace tool, you can also choose how
many colors you want. So you can change in the setting and you
have more or less. So this is an option. When you're happy
with the result, remember to go to
Object, Expand, Okay. Like I did before, now I related the background
because I didn't need it. So I have only the
flower, the blue flower. Then I made a copy and I gave to all the elements that
create that blue flower. I gave only one color. So you can choose to use
it also in this way.
9. Adobe Illustrator: Digitize PART 2: I'm going to show next
another way to vectorize. This time, I'm going to work on my watercolor flower bouquet. I'm going to move
it on the side, and I'm going to lock it so that when I draw on top of it, it will not move. This time, you are
going to work with a Blob Brush tool is one
of my favorite tools. You can select it
from the toolbar on the left or press Shift
B on your keyboard. I'm going to start by
tracing one of the flowers. If you want to change the size or the settings of
your blob brush, you can press Enter
on your keyboard. And here you will
find your settings. So I trace the outline
of the flower. Then I take some time to trace also the central
part of the flower. If I need a smaller size brush, I can always press again, Enter on my keyboard and
reduce the size of the brush. After throwing the flower, I'm going to draw
also the leaves and I continue using
the blob brush. Now I have the outline of
my flower and the leaves. What I could do is to continue
trace all the flowers and the leaves of this
bouquet and it's what I'm going to do later
for my infographic. But for now, I'm
going to show you different ways that you can use to color your
flower and your leaves. According to the
style that you like, you will choose
what is more adapt to the style of
your infographics. For the first example,
I'm going to select the central part of my flower
with the color picket tool, I pick a color and in this case, I give them the red color. Next, for example,
I want to give a field color to the outline of my flower and I want to
eliminate the outline. I select it. Then with the
shape builder tool that is shift on your keyboard or you can find it also on
the left tool bar. I'm going to drag the
tool across the shape. Now my flower is a full shape
with one li fill color. Next, I select it
with the arrow tool, B on the keyboard and with
the color picker tool, I choose another color
from my color palette. Now, and then I can do the same for the
leaves. I select them. Then with the builder tool, I throw across them to
make them become shapes. And then I select them and
with the color picker tool, I select the colors for them. After you color
them, you can also select them and
move them backward, clicking right on your mouse, arrange and bring to back. The other option is
just to give a color to the outline of your
flower and the leaves. Remember always to save now and then so you don't lose
any of your work. So until now, we use the image
trace tool, blood brush. You could use also the pencil
tool is quite similar. Next, I'm going to show you
the BCA tool or Pen tool. You can do basically
the same trace by hand, your art, your painting. I'm going to show
you an example. To use the BZA tool, you can press P on your keyboard or you can wide in on
the left tool bar. I usually like to work
only with the color for the stroke and not for the
feel. I will add it later. After I did this first draft, let's say sketch the shapes
on top of my illustration, I'm going to move
my vector shapes on my arboard and I'm going
to improve the shape, smoothen the angles, and improve it in
the way that I want. So now I show you some of the essential tools
you can use to draw. Of course, there are more tools and more process you could use. If you know how to
do it, that's great. It will help you, but if not, this is enough for you to start victorizing
your illustrations. These illustration,
they ready to be used later as decoration
for your infographics. Now we know how to
digitize our art. At this point, we can start
working on our color palette.
10. Manage Your Colors: All right now we
are ready to start working on a more final
version of our color palette. So let's first save this file, and then let's create a new one. You can choose the
setting that you prefer. You can give it a name. I
will call it color palette. And then press Create. Now that we created a new file, let's save it immediately. I'm going to save
it in the folder where I'm collecting
all the Adobe files I'm creating for these
wedding invitations and click Save. The next step, we're
going to place the pictures and
illustrations that we collected and what colors we like and that we want to
use for our color palette. So let's go to file place, go to the folder where you
collected your pictures and illustrations and
place them into the file. I like to place
them on the side of my arboard and on my arboard I'm going to
work with my colors. These are pictures I
found on Pinterest and that I saved on
my wedding board. Like we did before, let's
start with a shape. I like to use a circle, and let's fill it with a color. I'm going to use the
eye picker color and start looking for the color and the shade that
I like the most. Okay, let's choose a color
and then make many copies of this shape so that it's faster for us to fill it
with different colors. My suggestion when creating a color palette is to have
light and dark colors. And also, it's good
to have an off white because delicate
and neutral color are going to be very useful. I'm going to speed up this
process and you can follow. But basically, I am
going to try and pick different shades and eventually will select the one
that I like the most. But as you can see,
I will be choosing different shades of green of
white or yellow and pink. And while you're working, remember to save now and then. I usually press Control
Eson of my keyboard, but you can also go
to File and Save. Okay, now I created some small color palette
from these pictures, but I want also to use the color palette
we created before. So I'm going to go
back to the other file that we call vectorize
Illustrations, and I'm going to copy the
colors which chose there. These colors, I pick them from my own
watercolor illustration. To copy them, I will first select them with
the arrow tool and then rightly copy or
Control C on your keyboard. And then go back to the
color palette file. And to paste them, you can press Contrav on your keyboard or
right click Paste. Now, you can arrange
them and move them wherever you prefer
on your working area. Okay, this looks good. Now I have all the color that
I selected in this file. Next, I go to the
Swatches panel. I deleted all the colors that are automatically
placed there. I know I will not use them. If you want, you can leave them. You don't have to delay them. I will go to the
color palette panel. And then I will show you
how to say first colors. I way back to the
Swat cheese panel, I will have easy access in any file, the
new color palette. And I will name it
wedding number one. I will do the same for all the other three
color palettes. Select the colors,
new color group, name, and Okay. All right. Now for the final step, if we want to make these
four color palettes available to any Adobe file, we have to go to the
symbol of the library. It can save swatches. And then give a name
to this color palette. Call it wedding one,
but since it's actually going to include all four
of the color palette, I could have called the wedding color palette because it will include the color palette number color palette
wedding number one, two, three, and four. So I will show you how to open the color palette that you created previously
in a new file. You will go to the library. You will open your library, you go to User Defined
And then from there, select any color
palette that you like. A new window will open
and you select on the folder icon,
and automatically, the colors included in
that folder icon will be moved and copied in
your Swatches panel. We have digitized our art, illustrations and
photographs and prepared a few color
palettes to work with. You're ready to have fun and design a composition
using your assets. In the next lesson,
I show you how I compose a flower bouquet
with my victorized heart. If you want, you
can follow along, and then work on your own art.
11. Demonstration: Vectorize my Bouquet: In this lesson, I will show you the way I work on
vectorizing my assets. In this case, the flower bouquet I painted
with watercolors. I will also show the way I select the color and start
composing the bouquet. At the end of this lesson, you will notice that I
will prepare some of these assets and separate them from the bouquet
and put them aside. In this way, they
are ready to be used later when I will start
working on the layout. I find it useful to have these individual elements and to use them wherever I
want, wherever I need. Feel free to skip some part of this lesson if you
really are familiar with this process and feel ready to start sketching for your
infographic layout.
12. Layout Sketches: Alright. For the next step, you can sketch on paper how you imagine your infographics
to be. What I mean? For example, how do you imagine your menu to be placed on
the table, like physically? What about the name cards? I suggest you to even try and use some paper to make
real size prototypes. Fold the paper, carry it, and try out different options. For example, what I did. I had the list of the information
I want to communicate, and I sketched on paper my
ideas for the infographics. I will show you now
how I place them in this document to have them as a reference when in
the next lesson, I will start working
on the layout. As you can see, when
I was sketching, I started deciding the size
also from my infographic. For example, I decided
that my 70 date, I was going to
send it digitally, so I wanted it to be the
size of a phone screen. So thanks to this, I could decide the size of my
artboard in Illustrator. And this will also help me to decide how to export the file. And in the same way I did for
all the other infographic, you can see here in my sketches. This can always
be changed later, but I think it's good to
start with some idea of the final real size,
like physical size.
13. Layout Design: Save the Date: Alright, I'm going to start by designing
the save the date. I sketched it and I decided
more or less the size. I decided I'm going
to send it digitally, since it's just
to save the date. It's not like the
real invitation. So I wanted to have the size of a regular screen of a phone. So the first thing
I'm going to do is to change the size
of my artboard. So first, I will show you how
to open the arboard window. You go on the top menu window, arboard and the new
window will open. You will click on the arbod you want to
change the size of. A new window will open, and there you can change
the size of your arboard. You can put any size you want. I'm using centimeters as unit, but of course, you can
choose what you prefer. Now you will see me. I'm going to play some text. So it's just to see how much
space is going to take. Later, I will work
more on the layout, and I will select the pon
that I like the most. Okay. Now that I place some of the text, I want to start bringing
some of my illustrations, so I will open the file where I victorize
my flower bouquet. I will copy it and paste it in the file where I started
working on my saved date. I will copy and
paste also some of the individual elements
that I prepare in advance. And as I told you before, remember always to
save now and then. Next, I give a background color
to my save the date file, and I start looking into the font and see
which one inspire me the most or which one are
closer to the style I decided for my wedding
and my infographics. This part of the process can take me really a
long time sometimes, so I will cut it out or speed it up because I
spent a lot of time looking for the font that I
like the most, and it's okay. If you like font, we might end up spending a lot
of time for this, too. Once I find a phone
that convinced me, I start bringing in
my illustrations. So I start working
on the composition. And this is just a process. You will start with some idea. You might later discover you
don't like it and change it. And this also might take
some time, and it's okay. And what I suggest also is maybe to take a break
and after a few hours, maybe even the next day, go back to your infographic and see if you still
like your idea. That's normal. But
I suggest you to not get too stuck
on some detail, but to create a composition and go on with your other files. And then maybe come back, look at it again with fresh eye and see if you still like
what you did before. And as you will see later, I eventually ended up changing the layout for my
safety date, but that's okay. Then here, I'm going to show you how exported my
save the date with the idea that I was
going to send it to my guest via message or email. As you can see, first, I checked the number of my artboard in the
Artboard window, and then I went to File Export. In this case. I select the file format
that I think is the best for the purpose
of this infographic. And then I have to select
the arboard in the range. This is very important.
Otherwise, you will export either all the artboards
or all the working area. So remember to type here the
number of your artboard. Here, choose the
highest quality and all the options that
are going to give you the best final file. Even if you're not
going to print it, it's nice to have very
high quality illustration and infographic when you
send it to your guest.
14. Layout Design: Wedding Invitation: In the previous lesson, we designed the
save the date file. In this next lesson, I'm going to show
you how I design the wedding invitation files. I'm going to have a front and a back where I will put
different kind of information. And at the end,
I'm going to show you a possible way
to print them. I will start by reading at the information I want to include in my
wedding invitations, and then I'm going to look
at the sketches I made. So I want to include
what is happening, the ceremony location, more precisely where is going to
happen, and at what time. Other details, for example, the parking, the gift,
if you want any, if you want to ask
about special diets, and also the information for the RSVP so that the guests
can contact you on time. So let's say that for
this imaginary wedding, I decided to send the
invitation by traditional mail. I want my invitation
to fit in an envelope. If I'm going to use
an envelope with the sized 22 centimeters by 11, my wedding invitation is going to be a
little bit smaller. Let's say nine by
20 centimeters. Okay, so now that
I know the size, I'm going to my arboard window. This is artboard one where
we created the safety date, and this one is arboard two. I click on the icon, and here I can put the size. So as I said before, height 20 centimeters and
with 9 centimeters. I'm going to have information on both side of this paper,
so front and back. So I'm going to need
a second arboard with the same size where I will create the layout for the backside of my
wedding invitation. If you need to move your
arboar, for example, here, I want to move it closer
to the front side. I'm going to use
the rbarTol click and drag the arboard
I want to move. This time is going to be a bit more easy than when we started designing disability
date because we already worked on selecting the
colors and the font. You will find this a
little bit easier. As before, I will start choosing a background
color to do that. I use the rectangle tool, I click once on anywhere
on the working area, and this window will pop up. And here you can type the
precise size of your arboard. Maybe you can even do it a
little bit bigger to make sure that the rectangle covers
all the size of the arboard. And use the align
to to center it perfectly in the artboard. For the front side, we can actually copy most of the element from our savy date and change some of the text. As you see, I'm still
going to spend some time looking for other options
for the font, and it's okay. You can always change your
mind and go back and edit the font of your the date.
That's totally fine. I will skip the part
where I work on the back. And here is the result of the design I chose for the backside of my
wedding invitation, and this is the front. At this point, you could export the front and back design of your wedding invitation
as two separate file. So I'm going to show
you a way to do it. You're going to select
File and export Export As, give it a name, then select the Rboards that
you want to export. In this case, we have two
Rbods and then press Export, choose the maximum quality, Resolution 200 PPI perfect and make sure to optimize
four type in this case, because we have a lot of text. So if you were thinking to print this
invitation yourself, I'm going to show you
a way you could do it. So first, go to file and place the files that
you just exported, both front and back and positioning them on
two other arboards. In this case, I'm using
A four size arboard because I'm going to print them myself with a regular printer. Actually, let's say that,
I go to the local library. I bring my own paper, make sure that it's the printer machine can
work with that paper. So don't use maybe a paper that is too thick and too heavy. Once you place the images
of your invitation, position it them in a way that
on one side of the paper, you're going to print the front, and on the other side, you're
going to print the back. And I will also give
a background color. In this way, you have a bit of margin of
error when at the end, you're going to be
cutting the invitation. So here first, I
positionate the front, and I check which size is the best to positionate them and
to make sure they all fit. I decided to positionate
them in this way. I was able to fit three
copies of the front on one A four size arboard and three copies of the back
on the other arboard. Make sure they are positioned in the same way because when
you're going to print it, you want it to perfectly fit
the front with the back. This might take some
trial and error. Um, in the case, you're printing this with
a local printer shop, then you might want to ask them the direction
for the file. So they might want the file
made in a specific way in a specific format with
a specific color mode. But you can ask them, and they will probably
be happy to help you. Now I'm showing you how to
export these two A for files. So File export, I choose
a WPDF as format, and I type in the range. So the number of the two
arboards I was working with, you can always check the
number in the arboard window. And in the setting here, remember that you are
going to print this, so you want the best selection, the best settings
for a printed file. So we choose high quality print. Okay. So you could take
this file and go to the library and print
it or print it with your printer machine at home. So here you can see it
it's in my asset folder, and I have front and back. Oh, by mistake, I selected the wrong Rbard so it
printed the individual. So I'm going to do it
again, export, export, name, format, and write decorate arbor
numbers, then export. In the setting, choose
high quality print. That's okay and export PDF.
15. Layout Design: Welcome + Directions: In this lesson, I will
show you what I design as a welcome poster and
as a direction poster. I started by reading
at the list of information that I want
to share with my guest. So basically, I want
to make it easier for them to reach the ceremony, location, and the reception. I imagine that this time, I was going to print this poster on a three sized paper sheet, but you can do it
however you want. Like, the size can change, the material can change. You can customize this. So here you can see, I already created the layout for
the welcome poster. I used my flower
bouquet and the fern, and you can do
something similar, but you can have fun and compose all the your vectorized
element as you prefer. I also created, as you
can see on the bottom, I created a direction poster. In this case, I put an arrow. But you can decide
to put anything, any details or information that will help the
guest to arrive. You will see you can
notice that I let the background and the
illustration overflow. So they go outside the
boundaries of the artboard. This is because I want
to be sure that it's not going to be any white space. Even if printing on
regular printers, you will always
have a white space as a frame around
your illustrations. The solution for that
is to cut it out. If you go to a print shop,
they can do it for you. If you want to see the
final look of your poster, you can change the view. So go to view and
choose Trim View. And then you can go
back to overprint view. I like to change and to tagle these views just to have a better idea how it's
going to be the final look. Once you're happy
with the look of your welcome sign and your direction sign,
you can export them. You can choose the
format you want. You can choose the PDF
format, JPEG, PNG. It depends on how you're
going to use this file. And also here, remember to mark the arbod
you want to export. And then you can go in the folder where you
saved your design, and you will see the final look. In this case, I
saved it as a PDF. The two arbods will
be in the same file.
16. Layout Design: Ceremony Text: Next infographic we are going to design is the ceremony text. Here you can see my sketch, my initial idea of
the ceremony text. I was imagining to use an A four sheet of paper
in landscape mode, folded in half and have
our art outside and inside the text of your ceremony or any text you
want to position it there. So now I move on the right
side of my working area. What I need to do now is to
create a new A four arboard where I will start working on a design of the
ceremony text. You can go to the ArboardPanel, and the create a new
arboard and from there, you can also change the size. Another option is to
create a new arboard with the artboard tool that you can find on the left side panel. You will drag it, click and drag on the working
area then release. If you want a precise
size of your arboar, you can then go in
the arboard panel and from there change the size. In this case, we
want an A four size. Time we're going to
need two arboards with the same size because
we're going to design the outside and inside of our infographic for
the ceremony text. So it will be two separate
artboards, two separate file, and then we are
going to print on the same sheet of paper
with the size effort. Make it easier for us. I'm going to give a
name to each arboard, so we know which
one is the outside, which one is the inside. Since we are going to fall in half this file or
this piece of paper, we need to know precisely
where is the half. So what I do, I create
a rectangle shape and I position it on my arboard and it's the
same size of the arbard. Then I use a guideline and I
position it in the middle of this rectangle shape that
is going to be the middle of my arboard where we are
going to fold the paper. Sometimes because
of the setting, you cannot see the guidelines, you are going to have
to right click on your working area anywhere
and show guidelines. And then you do the same
for the other arboard. A another step you
could have done to make sure that your board that the rectangle is
center in your arboard is to use the align tool
and position ate it. Align it vertically
and horizontally. To help me design the outside
of our ceremony text. I'm going to copy the text
from our invitations. Before I start positioning texts or illustrations
on my artboard, I will lock the rectangles I
created, right click, Log. Since we created the rectangle
later than the other text, rectangles are going to
be on the top layer, either you bring
them to the back or you bring to the front
the text that we copied. The fold will be here and
this will be the front page. For example, you could
position the big bouquet here in the front
page and it also goes a bit to the last page. Or another option is to repeat the bouquet in a smaller size and repeat it all
over the surface. I've avoided the process
and now you can see the final design for the outside page and the
inside page with the text. Here I just place random
text to fill the space. I placed the bouquet
illustration colored with one only color, and then I reduce the opacity. In this way, it's shape
in the background that doesn't disturb and makes
it easy to read the text. As you can see, you can change the color and you can
change still the opacity. As you can see, the left text is linked to the right text. This because when
I copy and placed the text and I had to fit it to the A four size,
it wouldn't fit. I had to continue the
text on the right size, and now they are linked. Now you can say again an
example I will show you. First, I have to
leave the trim view. Then I will click on the
Red Cross and Red Square. In that way, I basically copy
all the text that doesn't fit in my first
frame for the text. And then I click and drag
again on the working area, and there I will place
all the left text. And if it still
doesn't fit again, I can click again on the
Red Cross and click and drag again until I have
all the text visible. Great. Now we are ready
to design our menu, the program, and the infographic
for the table numbers.
17. Layout Design: Tables Number, Menu, Program: Here you can see my sketch. Here is where I planned where I decided I wanted to use
this A four sheet and divide it in three
parts and place a different context
on each side. This is how it is going to look. So it's an A four sized
paper, folded in three. On one side, we are going to have the number of the table. On the other side, we're
going to have the menu, and I also included
the one menu. And then on the third side, we are going to
include the program. Of course, then
you can adjust it and personalize it in
any ways you prefer. In Illustrator, I
am going to start working on Rbard and the
size is the A four size. As you can see, I divided
it in three parts. There are different
things you can do. What I did is to create a rectangle with
a rectangle tool. I click anywhere on
the working area. And then when I write down the size of the width
of my rectangle, I'm going to divide it by three. Illustrator will automatically
divide it by three, and then I have
the perfect shape, and I'm going to use this to
help me place the guideline, like we did before with
the ceremony text. We did the same to find the
half or the working artboard. Now we are going to divide
board in three exact parts. So on the central part, I'm going to put
the table number, the menu on the right, and
the program on the left. I already designed the
final infographic, so I'm going to
position it the titles, and then I'm going to just move all the design that
already prepared. I intentionally placed
the bouquet so that they are both on the center part and the left side and center
part and right side. Then you can use the Align
tool to help yourself to place the number perfectly in the center and so on with
all the other elements. About the program for today, I'm going to show you the
way I did it for my wedding, and you can use this
as an inspiration. I changed the setting of my blob brush so that the
line would be smooth. And then I added a time and a title for what
was going to happen. Here you can see
how I exported and saved my file to be
ready to be printed. File, export, export S, and give a name and export. Remember to select
the right art word.
18. Layout Design: Place Card, Table Map, and Thank You Card: Here we are going to design
our last infographics. We will design the place cards, the tables map, and
the thank you card. We are going to start
with the place cards. Here you can see the
sketches I design to have an idea of how I want to
build my last infographics. Here you can see how I'm planning to design
the place cards. So I want to include nine place cards inside
an A four sheet. Then I'm going to cut
them, fold them in half, so that the place card
can stand by itself. On the right, you can see my
sketch for the tables map. I'm going to design two options, and then you can use
them as inspiration. Since this Adobe file
where we have been working until now has
become quite heavy for me. I'm going to create a
new Adobe file where I'm going to design
the last place card, table map, and thank you card.
You don't have to do it. If your file is
still working fast and easy, you can
continue in this. But I'm going to
show you what I do. So I'm going to go to File New. And as I did before, I'm going to name the file, choose which size of artboard
I need and how many Rbds. Color code, I'm going
to use always CMYK, and then I will create. This time, I'm going to
save it immediately. So I'm going to
go to file, save. I will choose the folder
where to save this file, give it a name or keep the
name I wrote before and save. So this is how the name tags or place cards are going to be. As you can see, is a piece
of paper folded in half. From the previous Adobe
Illustrator file, I copied the image with a
sketch of my infographics. So now I'm going to place
it in this new file. I'm also going to copy
and place some of my illustrations from
my first Adobe file, some of my text, any item that I could use in to design
my new place cards, cable map, and thank you cards. Since this is a new file, I'm going to open
the swatch panel, and I'm going to delete all the color swatch
that I don't need, and I make sure to
open the color palette that we created before with the colors we're using
for our wedding, our wedding decoration
and infographics. To do that, I open
my swatch panel. I go to the Swatch library. Go to User Define and open the color palette
we created previously. And by clicking on the
small folder icon, I activate each color palette
on the main Swatch panel. As I said, I'm going
to be working on A four size arboard and
I'm going to fit three, six, nine place cards in this
paper or in this arboard. So I want to create a small rectangle that
will fit nine times. And to use that, I simply use
the Power of Illustrator. As we did in the
previous lesson, I want to fit the rectangle
three times horizontally. So I'm going to ask I'm
using the rectangle tool. I click once on the Artboard, and I'm going to ask Illustrator
to divide the width of the artboard that in this
case, is 21 centimeters. I want to divide it three times. Then I'm going to divide it
three times also vertically. So I will have the
perfect rectangle to fit nine times
in this arbard. I'm going to use this
rectangle to help me place the guidelines so that they will help me design these place
cards in for graphic. And I'm going to
do two artboards because if you need
more than nine names, this is what you
are going to do. And also, if you want to print also the back of
your place cards, for example, with a full color, you can use when you print,
you can print from the back. So you will have a design or
a color also on the back. Here you can see the
speed up process where I draft a first composition
of these place cards. Okay. Here where I made these small
deck marks is where I'm later going to cut
the sheet of paper. So after I print, they will help me to
know where to cut. Not so I'm doing it so you can understand what
I'm designing. And in the middle
here is where you are later going to
fold your place card. So first, you cut the rectangle, then you fold it in half. So that is going to
be stand by itself. As you can see, I
decided to place the bouquet on the corner so
that when you will cut it, you will see part
of the bouquet on each side of the place card and also on the
other place card. So I like this that
the illustration is not just on one name card, but it's half half or maybe
one fourth, one third. So here now you have two A four size artboards that will be paper sheets
that you can print, as I did in my local library, and then you will cut and fold, like I showed you
in the picture. Next, I'm going to export
these two artboards. I'm going to go to File, Export Exports, select the artboards I want
to export, give it a name. If you need change the folder
where you are going to export the file and
click on Export. Here is where you can also choose the type of file
you want to export. I'm going to use a PDF because I know I'm going to go to print
it in the public library. About the tables map, I maj in to print the design
on an A three size paper, and then position it, place it somewhere in the nighting
area maybe before. This is up to you. But
here I'm going to create a three size artboard where I'm going to design
the infographic. I'm going to speed
up the process, but you can follow what I do. And as I said before, I'm going to design two different options. Now I'm ready to export also my citing maps or my tables map. So I go to file, save, save as, choose the folder where
I want to export to, choose the R words
I want to export, give it a name, and
click on Export. And this time also,
I use PDF format. I we are now ready to
design the thank you cards. And as everything,
this is not mandatory. You can choose to do it or not. I'm going to use the
same size we used for our cavity date and invitations. So it's going to be 20
centimeters by 9 centimeters. And as everything,
you can change this. I'm just going to use this size. And here, as you can see, is my final design for
the thank you card. It is something that you
can give to your guest at the end of the event or that you can send
by traditional mail. Weeks or months
after your wedding, or you can even send it
as a message or an email. If you want, you can use the trim view to help
yourself visualize how this infography is going to look once
you have printed it. To export it, again, you can go to File Export, Exports, write a name, choose the arbor that
you want to export. I'm going to use
PDF format again. I think it's the best one because you can
open it everywhere. It's the universal format that every phone and computer
should be able to open, and it's going to be
also good format for printing and also for
sending us a digital invite. We have now designed all of the infographics that we
might need for our wedding. See you in the next lesson where we are gonna
wrap up this class.
19. How to Upload Your Class Project: Now I'm going to show you what to do when
it's time for you to share your project in the project section
for this class. First of all, I open a Dob Illustrator and I'm
going to create a new file, a click on New file. Give a new name to this file. Let's call it class project,
my wedding infographic. So I'm going to work with
A four size artboard, and I will work
with the vertical. That's okay. Let's start
with one artboard. I will keep the CMYK color
mode. All right. Create. I'm going to save
it immediately. I'm going to place here the infographic that we have exported in the
previous lessons. Let's see if I have something
else interesting to place. I think that my other file are all in PDF because
we exported MS PDF. First, I place this
PNG image here, and then I go back to File
Place or Shift Control P, and I go to select my PDF. This is a good example
because I will show you how to choose a page
from a PDF file. Show import options, place. In this case, okay, it was just one page, so I will place it here. Control Shift P. Let's go
back to our PDA files. This is two pages, for example. So showing port option, it's still selected place. And from this window,
you can choose. Do you want to place picture one or just page
one or page two? Let's start with page one. You see, now I'm just
placing page one. There you go. Control S to save. Now it's time to
export this file and make it ready to be
shared on Skillshare. So go to File, Export exports. I think PNG, JPEG,
they are both good. I will go with PNG. The name is the right
name. Choose the fall. I want to use artboards and
I want to use both of them, and then I click Export. In this case, I want it
to be art optimized. I will go in my folder. And here I have my
exported PNG files, page one and Bay two. Next, I'm going to show you how I upload them on Skillshare. So I'm going to
go to my browser, and this is where
my class will be. And you will have this
option to submit a project. You can also go in this
menu on the bottom, click on Submit a Project. I will give it a name. Let's call it my
wedding infographics. Infographics include all
that we design infographics. In the project description, you can write
something my designs, but you can also just
place the images. You can click on
Adme Content image. And go find the file that we
just created one and two. I had to select one by one open. So this is the first one, and then I'm going to
add the second page. Or actually was the first one. Let's see if we can move them. Yes, maybe. Yes. So we have the two Rbards
and now they show, like, most of my infographics. You can choose to make
this project private, but I will keep it public. If you want, you can add
a video of your working. You can add a link if you made a website for your wedding. That would be so cool
to see if you end up making all the illustration for a website for your wedding. It would be very
nice to see that. And you can also
upload an image as a cover image for the project. In this case, it would
be better that it was just one image and not like the A four artboard with many pictures inside,
but you can choose. Oh, you can see the colors are different, very much different. Oh, no. Oh, this is better. I will submit this.
And once you're done, you can publish it. You go on the top and
click on Publish. And then on your profile, you can go and see your
latest project. There it is.
20. Conclusion: Well done, and thank you again
for watching this class. This class would
be available for you to watch again while you create your own version of this wedding invitation
and the wedding vendor. Together, we made a list of the information we wanted to
communicate to our guest. Then we discover where to find some inspirations and
we sketched our ideas. Later, we vectorized our art, and I show you how to create a special color palette
just for this project. And then we started working on the layout of each invitation,
each wedding infographic. And later, I showed you how
to export your designs, and I give you some ideas
on how to use them. I'm so proud of you
for following along. My hope now is that this
class give you the tools you need to use your creativity and create something
beautiful with it. Before we say goodbye, I would love to see
some of your designs. I'm so curious to see
what you come up. So please share them in the project section
of this class. And if you have any question, even the smallest, the
simplest question, but even the hardest questions, feel free to ask them in the discussion section
of this class. I will be here to answer to your question or
to your messages and help you along the way. Similarly, if you have any feedback or question
about this class, I will be glad to hear
from you and you can use the feedback section
for this purpose. Thank you again for doing
this class with me. If you want to stay in contact, follow me here on Skillshare or follow my profile
on Instagram. Bye.
Fiorenza Marani, Surface Pattern Designer
